Category Archives: 2012 – 366 Project

I never thought I was the type of person who could commit to something long term, however, having caught the photography bug 2¾ years ago I thought doing a 365 (well, 366 as it was a leap year) project was within my capabilities and could only improve my photography…I was right, it has improved my photography 10 fold and I am so proud of myself for having completed it today.

Within my 366 project I have many photographs that I am really proud of but It’s certainly not always been plain sailing and I have had an infuriating knack of leaving it right up until the last minute to get the shot…but I have always got a shot (though not necessarily the shot!)

So, why am I not going to do another 365 project in 2013?

When you listen to professional photographers they will always tell you, 2don’t publish pictures that you are not completely happy with”. Whilst I have a lot to be proud of in my project there are a few photographs I’m not so happy with, so, in 2013 I’m going to reduce my commitment and complete a 52 week project – 1 image per week throughout the year. I may well post a new image most days, but I will not be committing to taking a new image every day.

My aim, slow down, think about the picture I want to make, get it right in camera, spend more time in post-production and improve my overall quality.

Thanks to those of you who have followed me & encouraged me over the year, I hope you will keep following me over the next year and thanks to those who I have followed over the year – you have been an inspiration on Flickr, Google+ and Facebook. And also thanks to Photojojo who have featured my 366 project on their web site today – http://content.photojojo.com/tips/7-new-year-projects/

Finally thanks to my ever patient wife, Debbie, who has had to put up with the regular question “What am I going to photograph today?” again and again throughout the year 😉

I thought I’d try something different today. Normally when I look at the back of the camera and see a picture I like Iget it home and it’s rubbish. Today I looked at this shot on the back of the camera and didn’t like it. As soon as I had it on the computer I loved it! A nice bit of abstraction for a Sunday afternoon.

If you look back through this 366 project you will see periodic examples of my wife’s knitting. Well, she’s now going to try and earn some money from her hobby so obtained a dummy head and a separate torso for modeling and display purposes. So I got presented with a large array of knitted goods to photograph. I used a spotlight lamp as a fill light and my Nikon SB600 flash as my main light sources and did OK. It does have to be said, I need to get a replacement for the spotlight lamp and I need to get a roll of paper for backgrounds. Still, not a bad start.

Oh, by the way, she’s called Ena (after Ena Sharples of course) and the torso is called Hilda (Ogden – both from Coronation Street if you didn’t know).

I’ll admit, I was completely confused when I opened this present. All I saw was an Apple like box with the words “USB Rechargable” splashed all over it and a picture of what my addled brain thought was a Zippo lighter! Had she forgotten we had given up smoking almost 9 years ago? Was it an iPod, was it a knockoff Chinese Apple MP3 player…all these things went through my mind and all the time I was thinking, there’s no way she would have bought me an “i” anything. It turned out it was a small portable razor…that you charge via USB. Quite a good and useful present to be honest – it’ll live in my desk at work and be used periodically when I forget to have a shave at home in the morning…as I seem to do more and more recently 😉

This is something I’m, looking to do a lot more of in the New Year, photography of the night sky.

Tonight really wasn’t the ideal time to give this a go – an almost full moon certainly doesn’t help and being in the middle of a small town makes it doubly difficult to get a good shot of the stars in the sky with all the light pollution around. Still, I was quite pleased with what I got as a starter shot…watch this space (please click the image to see the stars properly)!

Christmas Day and the wife prepared her excellent Christmas Dinner for us as usual. JJ the cat has always had a penchant for Turkey (and chicken). I can honestly say I have never seen a cat eat so much Turkey in a day…as you can see from the following photograph, he was intent on getting his fill.

This made its debut this time last year as a macro picture, today I have taken a slightly different picture with a lot more of the Christmas tree (and therefore its bokeh) on show…what I did forget was to shake it…so today there is no falling snow in the snow globe.

We haven’t been out to Rowney Woods for ages so nipped out this afternoon before the rain returns again tomorrow. The woods were very wet and very grey so a black and white photograph was always going to be the order of the day, and so adding a reflection in a puddle also seemed sensible.

The strains of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody floated through from the living room as my wife watched the final of Strictly Come Dancing, I was wondering what to photograph and the old Queen song “Hammer to Fall” came into my head. I rummaged around in the fridge to find we only had 1 egg left, so had to root around the bin for a couple of broken shells…and here you have it!